


Fever

by Alixtii



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Bechdel Fix, Bondage, Dreams, F/F, Female Protagonist, Femslash, Illness - Fever, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Porn Battle, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-04
Updated: 2009-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:40:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith turns to Buffy for help as she struggles with a demonic fever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever

The doorbell rings.

"Faith," Buffy says when she opens the door, more than slightly shocked to see her sister Slayer. "How are you?"

"Honestly, B'?" Faith asks, and the expression on her face is one Buffy hasn't seen since she was in high school. "Sorta one by one."

She collapses into Buffy's arms.

.

"What does that even mean?" Buffy wonders idly as she sits at the side of Faith's bed, holding her hand.

"It's Air Force jargon," a Council nurse answers. "Five by five means loud and clear, so one by one means--well."

Buffy blinks, taking stock of the nurse for the first time. She had intended the question to be rhetorical.

The nurse is young and pretty, younger than Buffy or Faith even, and Buffy scowls at her which quickly achieves the desired effect of getting the nurse to exit quickly and leave Buffy and Faith alone in peace.

"Come on," Buffy whispers, "you can fight this." She brings her lips to Faith's forehead in a kiss, and can feel the heat of Faith's fever radiating against her.

Faith stirs. "I'm tired, B'," she whispers back. "So tired."

"I know," Buffy answers, but Faith's already lapsed back into unconsciousness. Buffy just squeezes her hand harder. Faith has woken up from worse than this, Buffy knows--her eight-month coma after falling off that building, her struggle with Orpheus, even a trip into the mind of Drusilla. Still, Buffy knows that it only takes one vampire to kill even a Slayer who has weathered many apocalypses, that any moment could be their last, and so she holds on tight and prays to gods she wished she could believe would help.

Eventually she falls asleep, and dreams.

.

She's walking through a dungeon, or a ghetto, or a cemetery--she can't be sure, as the setting seems to amorphously shift from one thing to another. None of them are good, though; none of them promise peace, or safety, or rest, or anything but danger.

She hears moans emanating from the end of the alley, or the hallway, or the row of graves--Faith's moans, and not the good kind, agony rather than ecstasy. Buffy knows the difference. She breaks into a run, and there, in a cell or a shack or sepulchre, is Faith, chained to a St. Andrew's cross, her clothes torn and her bodied burned, bruised, and bloodied. And across from Faith, her hand holding a flaming knife against Faith's abdomen, is Buffy herself.

Buffy doesn't even think as she begins to go about kicking evil-dream-Buffy's ass. Or tries to: the phantasmal manifestation of Faith's fever is stronger than she looks, and knocks Buffy back against the dreamscape.

Suddenly there's another cross next to Faith's, and Buffy knows that if she doesn't do something fast, she's going to be as bad off as Faith. But the fever's too strong; Buffy can't fight it on her own. So she dodges the fever's attack by jumping backwards in a flip which turns into a roll, landing her right at the base of Faith's cross, where she can take the chains in her hands and break them.

Faith's badly battered, but Buffy hasn't met yet the ghoul who can stand up to the two of them working together, and soon the fever is slain.

"You better wake up," Buffy advises Faith.

"Nah, I'm good," Faith says. Her wounds are healed but her clothes are still torn. The sun is shining in the sky.

Faith glances significantly at the twin crosses. "You up for a _good_ dream, B'?"

.

When Buffy wakes, the pretty young nurse is there. "Her fever's broken," the nurse says. "She's going to be fine."

Buffy nods. "Yeah," she says, "I know," which gets her a strange look but the nurse leaves the two of them alone anyway.

"Hey," Faith says as she wakes.

"Hey," Buffy answers back. She's still holding Faith's hand in her own; through all her time in Faith's dreamscape, she never let go.

And she never will.


End file.
